“Why do you care?” Rolan asked. “You after Hoff’s old job or something? Hunting criminals as well as Cryptics?”
Luc said nothing. He went back to staring at the fire, stony and silent.
Feeling angry and not knowing why, Rolan burrowed into his blanket. “I’m going to sleep. I need rest, assuming you’re going to have me chasing my own butt all around the forest tomorrow. Letting me poison myself and saying nothing.”
Luc did not reply.
With a disgruntled sigh, Rolan drew his blanket over his head. He let himself consider a world where Luchadgone on to become the duke of Crisanth and wondered how the world would have been different. He wondered if he and Mylas might have been friends. He wondered what it was that Luc was seeking out here in the woods, as his brother had accused him of doing. He wondered what Luc’s wish had been.
Sleep was long in coming, and when it finally did, he dreamed of a glowing unicorn in a field of flowers, and of his pa beating it with his cane until it turned into a heap of white ashes and gusted away on the wind.
- CHAPTER 24 -BAD FEELINGS
The next morning, they came across a trail of devastation.
His mouth set in a grim line, Luc told Rolan to hang back while he investigated. Rolan did, for a few minutes, then he followed after the Arcanist, picking his way over the fallen trees and split boulders. It was like a storm had blown through this section of forest, flattening and shredding everything in its path.
“I told you to stay in the trees,” Luc said. “Have you always been such a terrible listener?”
“Always,” Rolan confirmed proudly.
Luc was crouched over a large impression in the earth. It was shaped like a claw, with deep holes where talons might have pierced the ground. The size of it made Rolan’s heart falter.
He had a bad feeling in his stomach, like he’d eaten a whole salad of poisonous mushrooms.
“What if that thing is still lurking around?” he asked. “I mean, I’m obviously fantastic with a pair of knives, but if you mean to fight it—”
“If thisthingwere still close,” said Luc, “we’d already be fighting it. The only advantage we have is that when it does come, we’ll hear it before it can pounce.”
“When?”echoed Rolan. “Don’t you meanif?”
Luc just gave him a grim look before moving on to inspect some gouges in a nearby trunk. The claws that had torn the tree open were as long as the broadsword Luc sometimes carried when he was hunting.
This trail must have been made by the giant Cryptic, the one Rolan had seen from the barn weeks ago. The one Luc had been so worried about, he’d told the duke of it. Maybe Luc should have accepted the duke’s offer to call for more Arcanists. Looking around, Rolan felt ill with dread.
“Do all Cryptics get this big?” he asked.
Luc shook his head. “Only the darkest secrets grow this powerful. Most never surpass Rank Three. This one will have wandered off to the wilds of the western mountains, to mature in their eternal shadows, and now it’s returned home.”
“Returned?”Rolan echoed. “Why?”
Luc’s fingers rubbed the pommel of his sword hilt. “When they get big enough, secrets find their way home.”
“What’sthatmean? They… hunt down the person who created them?”
“Not if we stop them first,” Luc replied, with what he perhaps meant to be a reassuring smile. It looked more like a grimace.
Queasily, Rolan gazed back over the trail the Cryptic had left through the forest.
“What rank do you reckon it is? Four? Five?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Luc. “We’ve been in the forest long enough. Lead us home, boy.”
Rolan fetched a stick and two stones, found north, and they struck off into the woods.
After ten hours and several wrong turns, they finally heard the sound of Supper bleating in the distance. Rolan broke into a run, breaking free of the forest with a shout of triumph. He drank in the open air and rolling green hills, the city a distant monument to all things good and civilized.
“I did it!” he declared to the sky.
